1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photographing apparatus and a file management method used in the photographing apparatus, and more particularly, to a photographing apparatus and a file transfer method used in the photographing apparatus in which, if an external device includes a file having the same file name as image data of the photographing apparatus, the image data of the photographing apparatus and the file of the external device that have the same file name are displayed when the image data is transferred to the external device, thereby improving convenience and efficiency in file transfer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital cameras create image files after shooting and store the image files in a memory by assigning each of the image files a file name. In general, digital cameras use a set of strings constituted of characters and numbers for file names. For example, a file name may be created by combining a set of character strings, such as “DSC” or “IMG” with ascending numbers. Thus, the image files may be assigned file names, such as DSC0001, DSC0002, . . . , DSC0100, and DSC0101, according to the sequence of capturing and stored in a memory of a digital camera.
Users may retrieve image files stored in a memory to view the image files through a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen of a digital camera or may delete image files that are no longer necessary or that are shot incorrectly. In addition, users may transfer image files to an external device, such as a personal computer, through a data communication cable in order to print out, keep, or further process the image files stored in the digital camera.
However, when image files are transferred from a digital camera to an external device, file names of the image files in the digital camera frequently overlap with those of files in the external device. For example, if a plurality of memory cards formatted on different days are used for shooting, the file names of the image files may overlap. Furthermore, if such image files with the same file names are transferred to a personal computer, a dialog box warning of overwriting appears on the personal computer, and thus the user has to check each of the image files so as to decide whether to overwrite. Instead of checking every image file so as to decide whether to overwrite, the user may create a new folder in the personal computer, move the image files from an original folder to the new folder, and then transfer image files from the digital camera to the original folder.
However, it is inconvenient for users to check whether to overwrite a number of image files. In addition, it is difficult for users to determine whether to overwrite image files having the same file names without being aware of the content of the image files, and precious image files may be lost. It is also inconvenient for users to create a new folder and move image files to the new folder.
Furthermore, a digital camera is insufficient by itself to confirm the content of an image file. An image viewer software in a personal computer has to be executed to open and confirm the image files one by one. Then, the user has to select whether to overwrite (e.g., by clicking on the “Yes” or “No” button in a dialog box). However, all these processes are very troublesome to the user.